An Anecdote for Dr. Willis

I often use stories as metaphors in my writings. With the announcement this week that Dr. Willis would be taking on the role of principal at Greene County Intermediate School, I thought back to the many stories that I had about her over the years. I hired Uvonda Willis 13 years ago as an English teacher in Pitt County. At the time, the graduation project was still a state requirement and I gave her all of the Seniors that had not been successful in Engish 4 or on the project specifically. She worked with some tough kids and had a daunting task, but she did a great job reaching them. She could often be found teaching without shoes on and used her planning periods to run around and find mentors and other resources to support her kids. After I came to Greene County, she had been hired on as an assistant principal in that school. When I had an opportunity to hire an assistant principal here, she was the only person I really wanted to interview. I called her and paced around in my yard as I tried to sell her on my vision of what the school could be and how she could help us get there. Since then, she's been my right hand. She has pushed me to think and grow, protected me when I needed to focus on myself, and been a sounding board when I needed to figure out difficult problems. Through all of the things that we have been through, conversations we have had, and wild plans that we have made (we probably should revisit some of those), there are a ton of stories that I could tell. So how do you choose? What metaphor do you want to tell about someone that has contributed so much to you personally and professionally? What does that story need to convey?

The answer is that this isn't a good story, it's an anecdote. There's a difference between a story and an anecdote. A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In a good story, you don't see the end coming at the beginning. But an anecdote is predictable. You know how it will end right from the start. That's why I think the story of my sister Uvonda is an anecdote. From the start, I knew that the day would come when she would get the opportunity to develop her own vision and lead her own school. Fortunately, I was able to be there to see the beginning of this predictable tale and of those of you that have been here since she arrived, you've seen that beginning as well. So rather than tell a story, I'll celebrate this anecdote. We all knew that this day would come and I couldn't be more proud of her. We will miss her leadership, her creativity, and her ability to find resources outside of our building to make things work. In the end, I think it will be better becasue she can pour those skills into the students that come to us, and for that, I am grateful. So in the time left, I'll keep the stories that we have shared as great memories and I'll celebrate the anecdote that I always saw coming. 

Supporting the Whole School

One of the state committees that I found myself on this year is the Whole Child Committee. It is a group built of mental and physical health professionals, school support coordinators, policy leaders and K-12 educators. The goal is to guide policy related to all of the non-instructional needs that students face today. If you're thinking that encompasses a lot of things, you'd be right. I had an opportunity to speak yesterday to the group about issues that I currently see related to this need. In Greene County we are more fortunate than most in this area despite our economic status and rural designation. Having access to physical and mental health providers on campus is a huge deal. But even with the access that we have, it somehow never seems like enough. So after bragging about all that we have, I reminded the panel that this is a tough time of year for several reasons. Students needing access to our health providers, specifically mental health providers, often don't have the same level of access due to all of the other students that are currently being treated. There simply are not enough resources to match the needs. So when students need to talk to someone, they often turn to teachers instead. They trust us as people that care about them, are willing to listen to them, and as someone that can provide advice for them. And while that is an amazing relationship to have, it also has it's limits. When students regularly disclose their mental health needs to teachers, the impact comes in the form of secondary trauma. We mentally and emotionally carry the burdens of children that disclose them to us. And because we would never turn a student away, those pile up on us on top of the regular stresses that come with the job. Too often in the time of negotiating policy and budgets, education people can only see direct impacts on themselves. But right now, I think that one of the best things that we can do to support teachers is to provide students with the mental and physical wellbeing that they need. Supposrting the whole child really means supporting the whole school, you and I included.

How Do I Know You're Good?

I'm literally neck-deep in projects right now. Between the various committees and advisory groups that I've been invited to join, all of them seem to be demanding some of my time at once. Oh and I'm supposed to be running a school. One of those projects involves developing a proposal for a new principal compensation plan. Principals are paid on performance and I am advocating that we need something more than test scores to tell that story. The problem is that isn't easy to determine what we should use. In my discussions this week, someone asked me a short, but difficult question. "How do I know that you're a good principal?" It's not very easy at all to sum that up and it becomes even harder to begin to apply it to all principals. A lot of what we do as educators can't be summed up into a test score. It isn't always easily quantified and the timelines of our effectiveness don't always fit into the school calendar year. Test scores aren't what students remember about us and if you ask the public, it's probably not the first thing they will mention. But it is still important. 

This is exactly why I did the exercise at the recent faculty meeting. The word cloud our staff created of what our next Teacher of the Year should be is just as complicated as the answer to my question. Take a look at the words below. How do I know if you are passionate? How about fun, adaptive, or reliable? In fact, I think I could argue that not a single one of the words that our staff list can be accurately determined in a test. Instead, you see them in day-to-day actions and their consistency is the key to success. So how do you know if a teacher displays there? You have to watch and you have to pay attention a lot. Unfortunately, our roles don't always give us the privilege of doing that as much as we should. So in the spirit of choosing the right person, I ask that we all take a little more time to watch over the next few weeks. Test scores and student performance can only tell us a piece of the story, but you have to look for the people that are caring, positive and adaptive.  

What Gives You Hope?

I'll be the first to admit that having the POY title has opened a few doors for me and given me the opportunity to meet some fascinating people. With the State Board meeting taking place this week in Raleigh, I had the chance to attend a book talk on Meredith College's campus that was sold out. Ibram X. Kendi and Nic Stone collaborated to release a book entitled, How to Be a (Young) Antiracist. It's a follow-up to Kendi's book with the help of Stone, who is more well-known for her young adult fiction. The talk involved both authors and quickly leveraged the importance of talking to young people today about past and current social justice issues. The authors reached way back into our history but also talked about current events, more specifically, the death of Tyre Nichols. I was reminded of the incident involving Rodney King when I was a student and how a teacher took the time to help us understand the social implications of the event and the trial that followed. (Teaching social justice isn't really a new thing.) It was hard to understand back then and I know that it's at least as hard for kids to grapple with today given their increased access to opinions on the topic. 

My connection to the book talk came through NC's Beginning Teacher of the Year, Xavier Adams. One of his high school students was invited to ask a few questions as a guest moderator. Aside from her, everyone else on stage was in their late thirties or older. She followed deep discussions on the history of racism, the intersection of politics, and the terrifying examples of our past. The table set before her was not easy, but she handled it with such grace that I started to consider how differently students today might think of things than I did at her age. Then came her final question. And despite the wealth of information given in that two hours, the most powerful thing that I left with was the last question that she posed to both authors, "What gives you hope, despite everything you have discussed tonight, that things are getting better?" The nearly two-hour event had discussed dark events and topics that solicited feelings of anger, contempt, or disagreement, but in that one sentence, the mood instantly changed. This is why we have to talk to young adults differently. She saw progress, whereas we saw the problem. 

It's a powerful lesson that we can learn a lot from to grapple with any ongoing problem. We have plenty of those in education or just in working with each other. We organize whole committees with the goal of finding and trying to solve problems. Maybe we should also take a minute to consider what gives us hope that things are getting better, even if they aren't what we envision just yet. 

Don't Dislike Your Children

I've been spending a lot of time in a car recently. My role as the state principal of the year requires me to travel quite a bit. Just this week I crisscrossed the state and between Tuesday morning and Wednesday evening, I had been in a car for about 10 hours. You can only listen to so much music when you drive that much and I can't check my email and drive, so I turned to audiobooks to at least stimulate my brain a little with all that highway time. This week I started 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. He's a somewhat controversial person and this isn't at all an endorsement of him. To be honest, I don't agree with 100% of what he says or writes, but it does make me think and that's the point. One of his 12 rules really got me thinking about the students in our classrooms and how we interact with them. It reads: "Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them." The chapter has absolutely nothing to do with teaching. It's about parenting your own children and addressing misbehavior in small children so that society doesn't have to correct them later in a much more difficult way. It's the same reason we must focus on classroom management as educators. 

On the surface, classroom management is about running things well enough so that the lesson can be taught. You need students attentive, engaged, and not disrupting others so that learning can take place. But like most things in a classroom, the content isn't what we are really teaching. Teaching students how to participate in society and in a group is the real lesson. They graduate from school and classrooms but they will work and live with others and knowing how to be a productive member versus one that is counter-productive is essential. That's why we have to take the time to teach and address things when students do something that we (and others) dislike. Ignoring it is the equivalent of allowing your child to throw a tantrum in a store when they want the toy. If you don't address it, they will keep doing it and believe that it is ok. Meanwhile, the rest of the store (and the classroom) creates a dislike of them as an individual. As educators we prepare young people to be productive adults. They learn some content along the way and we hope that some piece of that content sparks an interest that leads to a career or passion later in life. Along with their families and peers, we guide these young people to be the best versions of themselves that they can be in so many ways. Therefore, it is just as much our responsibility to correct students when they do things that we and others will dislike. Teaching that is just as important as the content of our lessons because as an adult, they will be assessed on it every day.

Empathy Leads to Equity

I have talked a lot about empathy in blog posts over the years. I strongly feel that teaching students how to understand and care for a person whose experiences are different than their own is one of the most important things that we can ever teach a student, yet isn't found in a curriculum. Without a doubt, the best way to teach this is to model it and as we have changed classes and students for the new semester, I have had the opportunity to see this in action. 

Since the start of the semester, many of you have gained students with different needs. Students that do not speak English. Students in a wheelchair. Students with extreme situations outside of school that impact their ability to be successful in school. It doesn't take long to notice these students. Physical differences are quickly seen and a teacher with little experience can spot a struggling student. Understanding their condition is great, but taking action based on that understanding is impressive. This week I have had requests for desks, manipulatives, and grace in grading from teachers that recognized that a new student in their n classroom would need something different to be successful this semester. I absolutely love that. Pushing beyond the recognition and toward a solution that provides a student with something that will level their playing field is exactly what equity is all about. Hats off to those of you that recognized a difficulty and sprung to action for the benefit of a student. It's what teaching is really all about. 

New Year New Me?

The opportunities of a new year, a new semester, and new classes of students have always excited me. It's a chance to put into practice some of what you know went right and fix some of what you didn't like. It moves reflection to action, but only if you take the opportunity. Maybe New Year's resolutions get played up too much or perhaps they are over marketed by companies looking to exploit your desire for self-improvement, but it seems that there are just two camps of people on the issue. There are those that overly embrace the "New Year, New Me" attitude and those that outright reject and mock others for it. I think both groups missed the point. A new year and really any opportunity to have a fresh start doesn't have to be some grand change in personality or life habits. You don't have to be a "new you." That level of change is extremely difficult for any person. Like most things, success can be seen in smaller adjustments rather than extreme changes. As we tackle a new semester, with new classes and a new year, I challenge you to forget trying to be a new you. Instead, the challenge is just to be a slightly better, happier, and more fulfilled you. Small changes are manageable if you define them and more times than not, they make bigger impacts than we expect. If you haven't done so, look back on the previous semester, and maybe at the goals that you set at the beginning of the year within your department or on your PDP. What small changes can make those goals happen and what did you learn? You might not be able to create a new you, but I promise you can adjust the one that you already are, and that's always going to be enough.